All Round View

In the years following Ian Botham’s retirement and, some would argue, for a number of years before it, England’s selectors were so fixated on all rounders that they handed out test caps to just about anybody who batted above number nine in county cricket and also bowled a few overs. The thought of Derek Pringle batting at number six and of Mark Ealham or Phil Newport playing test cricket still makes me wake, screaming, in the middle of the night.

Now, however, it is Australia who are applying the ‘not good enough with either bat or ball so must be an all rounder’ logic or, as John Inverarity might put it, putting their faith in multi-skilled cricketers (he’s fooling no-one). There is a shortage of test standard spinners in Australia at the moment, but the selection of Glenn Maxwell as number eight batsman and second spinner, apparently on the basis that he’s a decent limited overs player and is called ‘The Big Show’ and so, therefore, must be good, was the stupidest selectorial decision since trying to shoehorn Cameron White, a better batsman but even worse bowler, into the same role a few years before.

It’s not even as if they can plead ignorance: England had already amply demonstrated this winter that a batting all-rounder and part time spinner, in their case Samit Patel, is not what is required in Indian conditions against Indian batsmen. Unless the Australian management team watched the Ahmedabad test with their hands over their eyes this should have been obvious, and yet the selection of the palpably inadequate Maxwell was their solution to the travails of the first test. It takes a special kind of genius to take a struggling bowling attack and make it worse, for the selection of Maxwell was compounded by the promotion of Xavier Doherty, a worthy trier and one day toiler who is also well short of test class, while Nathan Lyon carried drinks and Steve O’Keefe languished in Australia.

Of course defeat in Hyderabad wasn’t just down to the bowlers and it’s possible to sympathise with the desire for lower order runs given the feeble state of the top order in alien conditions, but when the next mooted solution is to play Steve Smith then you are in trouble. Smith may have improved his batting (although so has Phillip Hughes), but his bowling (forty-six first class wickets at over fifty-six) will make the Indian batsmen think that they are in heaven, or at least an all you can eat buffet.

Australia are hampered by the fact that their one proper all rounder is currently unable to bowl, although they aren’t helping themselves by labouring under the misapprehension that he’s a top order batsman, but this fixation with allegedly multi-skilled cricketers really isn’t doing them any good. There is a logic to playing Moises Henriques, especially in a side with two proper spinners, since he batted well in the first test and can operate as a useful third seamer in a five man attack, but they must stick to their guns with the rest of the attack and pick the best bowlers. It might cost them a handful of runs, but it may also give them an outside chance of bowling India out for less than 500.